Another tale of WA's forgotten and hidden history: Don McLeod and the 1946 Pilbara strike

"He basically waged war against the West Australian government. He collected an enormous cache of documentation; he was going to run this huge High Court case based on legislation back in the late 1800s to try to achieve land rights for Aboriginal people. Pretty much to his dying day he was in there boots and all fighting for Aboriginal people."
Deborah Wilson on Don McLeod

Since  2010  I have been writing about the historical silences and the hidden and forgotten history of Western Australia.

 

This includes blog pieces on Aboriginal deaths in custody, Aboriginal poet Jack Davis on Aboriginal history, and the death of John Pat, the Wagerup community taking on Alcoa, the Esperance lead scandal, the scandal of asbestos and Wittenoom, the Atlas oil spill, corporate money and political parties, the imprisonment of an 8 year old Aboriginal boy for stealing a Freddo Frog, the long history of internment camps, the significance of the citizen sector and civil society protest movements, nuclear industry and the corporate stranglehold on NFPs,  

A number of blog pieces here and here were about the 1946 Pilbara strike by Aboriginal pastoral workers for fair pay and better working conditions  in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

 

The strike was a historic event in Australian history. It was the first major strike by Aboriginal people and one of the longest strikes in Australian history. Sadly, the Pilbara strike is largely a footnote  in the 'official' view of Western  Australian history. A recent history of WA since 1826 gives the strike scant attention.

 

A key figure in the 1946 strike was Don McLeod, a white miner, activist, trade unionist and communist who had been initiated into Aboriginal society and culture. McLeod, along with Aboriginal lawmen Dooley Bin Bin and Clancy McKenna  were the coordinators and leaders of the strike.

Don Mcleod was chosen as the key negotiator. At the time he was  a delegate for the Australian Workers Union in Port Hedland.

The strike was planned as far back as 1942 at an Aboriginal law meeting attended by  200 senior Aboriginal law men representing twenty three language groups from much of the remote north west of Western Australia. The meeting lasted six weeks. 

The decision was  taken to postpone the strike until after the Second World War had ended. 

 

At the time Aboriginal workers were paid for their work with supplies such as tobacco and flour instead of cash. The situation in the Pilbara was akin to slavery: if Aboriginal people left a job they could be pursued by the police and forcibly brought back.

 

On May 1 1946, after years of planning, 800 Aboriginal pastoral workers walked off the large pastoral stations in the Pilbara  and from employment in the two major towns of Port Hedland and Marble Bar.

 

Despite constant harassment the strikers sustained themselves using a method of surface mining for tin, and trading skins and pearl shells. The strike continued until August 1949 when the striker's determination and tenacity were rewarded with improvements to pay and conditions for Indigenous people.

 

At the end of the strike many Aboriginal people refused to  work for white station owners. 

         

The strikers also realised a dream of economic independence. They established a number of successful cottage industries and mining concerns and in 1951 they registered Pindan,  the first Indigenous-owned company in Western Australia which went on to own several pastoral stations, including the Strelley station near Port Hedland and establish an independent community school.

 

In 2012, Anne Scrimgour argued that the community and political activism that resulted from the activities of the strikers and particularly from Pindan, the indigenous corporation they created, continued for decades after the strike and was largely overlooked in studies of Aboriginal and social justice activism in Australia.

 

The ABC website has posted a recent story about Don McLeod, which draws from Deborah Wilson's book Different White People: Radical Activism for Aboriginal People 1946-1973 published by the University of WA Press.

Wilson argues that the Pilbara strike was a trigger point that led to the modern Aboriginal rights movement.

Why this sudden change in the West Australian's reporting of the Atlas oil spill?

After ten weeks the West Australian finally has a front page piece on the environmental catastrophe occurring off the Kimberley Coast where the PTTEP owned West Atlas oil rig continues to leak massive amounts of gas and oil into the Timor Sea.

In the period since the spill the West Australian's coverage has been piecemeal and minimised its seriousness, extent and impact. The West has sought or provided little detail on the spill and its reports have been well back in the body of the paper. There has been no coverage of the local, regional and international consequences.

So why this sudden change of heart? Well it's known as corporate damage control and the West Australian is a key player in the resource industry's damage control strategy.

The West's report today suggests that the resources industry is concerned that the Atlas oil spill is damaging its reputation at a time when a growing number of multinational resource corporations are seeking massive expansion in offshore exploration, drilling and processing off the WA coast. Faced with the damage the spill is causing to their reputation, the industry has reportedly offered assistance to PTTEP.

So the industry's concern is not about the damage done to the environment, but a desire to repair the damage to the industry's image. And here's where the West Australian comes in.

The West's decision that the story is front page news does not reflect any real concern about the environmental destruction resulting from the spill or the negligence of the company involved. Rather, it reflects the West Australian's closeness to the resources and mining industry and its sensitivity to industry concern about damage to its reputation.

After all the West Australian is a major beneficiary of the resources industry. It's not something that is written or spoken about here in the West, but there are good reasons to wonder if an unhealthy level of closeness between the West Australian and the resources industry has influenced the paper's coverage of the Atlas oil spill.

Atlas oil spill

(Photos from the WWF and the Guardian)











You won't find these photographs of the West Atlas oil spill on any Australian government or media site (other than Crikey). Stumbled across these photographs on the Guardian website.

How is it possible that the corporation responsible for the Atlas oil spill, the worst offshore oil spill in Australian history, can be given access by the Federal government to an additional 1480sqkms of Australian waters. The corporation responsible- PTTEP- has just been awarded 5 new exploration licenses and new oilfields near the leaking oil rig. And the Federal Minister Martin Ferguson reckons that there was nothing to suggest the company had done anything untoward. And as usual there is nothing but silence from Environment Minister Garrett.

The Atlas Oil spill: Just who is the West Australian kidding?

"And the company takes what the company wants
And nothing's as precious as a hole in the ground"

Blue Sky Mine, Midnight Oil (Lead singer Peter Garrett now Federal Environment Minister)

Two hundred and fifty kilometres off the WA Kimberley coast an environmental catastrophe is unfolding. Every day for eight weeks an estimated 400 barrels of oil have been leaking from the Atlas Oil rig into the Timor Sea. The leak began on 21 August and as of 13 October remains unplugged, despite numerous promises and commitments made by PTTEP the corporation responsible. The company is still unable (or refuses) to say what caused the spill, how much oil has leaked and when it will be plugged.For 8 weeks there have been assurances from the company and the Federal government that the leak is not serious and will soon be under control. Instead there has just been delay after delay and largely silence by the company and the Australian government on what happended.

Yet the West Australian newspaper (like the Australian government) can't seem to decide whether the leak is serious or not. It plays down the seriousness of the leak by claiming the experts are divided. In a piece in today's West (the first for nearly a week and as far back as Page 23) with the headline Experts divided on the spill's impact on marine life the West refuses to take a position on the spill. Compare the West Australian's efforts at supposedly objective reporting on this issue with its willingness to advocate and prosecute any number of other issues that serve its business interests or those of large WA corporate and business interests. Just why is the West Australian newspaper so keen to minimize and play down the seriousness and impact of the spill?

Well here's one perspective on that issue from Robert McChesney cited in David Edwards and David Cromwell' 2006 book Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media:

"balanced professional journalism continuously "smuggles" in values conducive to the commercial aims of the owners and advertisers, as well as the political aims of the owning class"

The Atlas oil leak is one of Australia's worst oil spills. The oil and gas is leaking in what is recognised as a pristine marine environment, acknowledged as a "marine superhighway" for whales, dolphins, flatback turtles, fish and bird life. WWF Australia reports that the area is home to 15 species of whale and dolphins, more than 30 seabirds and five types of turtles and 30,000 individual sea snakes and 16,000 turtles.

Environmental groups and conservationists estimate that the oil slick has now spread at least 15,000 sq kms and covers an area more than 100 times the size of Sydney Harbour. The slick is reported to have reached Indonesian waters.

Environmental groups and fisherman who have visited the site describe significant harm to the environment and marine life, and identify concerns about the impact of toxicity including:

• use of detergent (dispersants) which harm wildlife
• flat back turtles and sea snakes contaminated with a combination of oil and detergent used to disperse the oil
• sea snakes swimming amidst oil
• dolphins and fish swimming in the slick affected water
• sea birds covered in oil slick
  
• death of sea birds
  
• possible impact on coral spawning at Ashmore and Cartier Reef
  

Fisherman are particularly concerned about the likely impact on commercially important species such as snapper and red emperor, which are spawning at this time of the year.

The ABC carries unconfirmed reports of Indonesian fisherman finding thousands of dead fish and dead dolphins.

Political indifference to corporates who pollute

(Photo courtesy of Chris Twomey, Senator Rachel Siewart's office)

The indifference of State and Federal governments and the responsible authorities to the West Atlas oil spill continues a long tradition here in Western Australia.

Here in the West mining and resource multinationals are given plenty of slack when it comes to their destruction of the environment, and harm to human wellbeing and communities.

Environmental standards are regularly ignored or brushed under the carpet in the face of multi - million dollar profits and royalties. In addition to the environmental harm, the social harm and damage to the fabric of communities and the harm to human wellbeing are routinely trivialised or ignored. Think of the social and community harm done to Western Australian communities such as Port Hedland, Roebourne, Karratha, Ravensthorpe, Hopetoun, Yarloop and Augusta. Or the massive impact on human health resulting from lead poisoning in Esperance or multi chemical exposure from the Wagerup refinery. Or the families and children impacted on by deaths due to lax safety standards . Or the social costs to families and communities of the fly in fly out lifestyle.

The Atlas oil spill is now one of Australia's worst oil spills. On 21 August 2009 gas and oil began leaking from the West Atlas Mobile rig in the Timor Sea. The rig is located 250 kms off the Kimberley Coast, in what is recognised as a pristine marine environment. The area is acknowledged as a"marine superhighway" for whales, flatback turtles, fish and bird life.

There has been no sense of urgency or serious concern from either State or Federal governments. They did all they could to play down the seriousness of the incident, to claim that all was under control and that the spill posed no threat to the environment, to marine life and the WA Coastline.

Greens Senator Rachel Siewert has been the only political and business leader in this state to speak publicly about the seriousness of this issue and to question the lack of urgency shown by the company and State and Federal Governments.

There has been some tough talk from the Federal Government. One interesting issue is whether the spill represents a breach of the WA Pollution of the Waters by Oil and Noxious Substances Act 1987 and if so whether any charges laid

Compare the indifference and unwillingness of the Barnett Liberal National government to act against corporate polluters of the environment, with their vigorous pursuit of young people who use a spray can to tag a suburban wall